Senate GOP Delays a Vote on Broken Healthcare Bill

In the first reasonable move since the Senate Republicans begrudgingly unveiled their most recent attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will delay the a vote on the bill until after the July 4 recess, CNN reports. Amidst condemnation from multiple GOP senators, McConnell—and other Republican lawmakers—became acutely aware they were never going to get the votes they needed to pass the deeply unpopular bill. The new plan is to rework the bill and then get a new Congressional Budget Office score.

The move reflects the extreme difficulty Republican leadership faces in getting everybody on board to pass any healthcare bill. The Republicans can only afford to lose two votes—assuming Pence breaks a tie in their favor—if a bill should ever reach the voting stage. It’s not impossible to foresee a change to the inadequate and flawed Obamacare in the future—Elizabeth Warren is notably leading the charge from the Democratic camp—but it’s going to be quite awhile before we approach anything that could be even remotely considered bipartisan.

Now that secretly passing the bill without public interference is off the table, Republicans are forced to admit that, as McConnell just said, healthcare is a “big complicated subject.”

Yeah. No shit.